17 years later, a confession in death of Breaker

LYDA LONGA, Staff writer

Thursday

May 13, 2010 at 12:01 AMAug 15, 2012 at 12:02 PM

DAYTONA BEACH -- A church service inside this country's largest maximum-security prison stirred the conscience of a convicted killer to such a degree that the inmate confessed to the murder of a Spring Breaker 17 years ago.

Romalis Gordon, who is serving two life sentences for the murders of two women at a truck stop casino in Houma, La., wrote a short note to his warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola last month telling him he needed to get something off his chest.

The 38-year-old inmate said he wanted to talk about the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Christine Lazzaro, a western New York college student who came to Daytona Beach for Spring Break with friends.

Instead, the young woman from Irondequoit, N.Y., who attended Monroe Community College, ended up with two gunshot wounds to the head after spending a night with Gordon in a DeBary motel. Her body was found on Easter Sunday -- April 11, 1993 -- in a grassy area off Dirksen Drive in DeBary, said Volusia County sheriff's spokesman Gary Davidson.

The confession by Gordon, described as a career criminal by the former sheriff of the Louisiana parish where the casino murders occurred, brought closure not only to Lazzaro's mother but also to the sheriff's investigator who often thought about the unsolved killing.

"It's one of those (cases) you think about," said Volusia County sheriff's Investigator Larry Horzepa, a deputy since 1986. "These kids came down here to have fun."

Horzepa, who investigated the Lazzaro murder in 1993, said it was especially difficult to crack the case because Gordon just "drifted" into Florida three or four months before the killing and was using an alias because he was wanted out of Louisiana for armed robbery.

The only thing that was known at the time was that Lazzaro had visited two nightclubs the evening of April 10 and she was seen with a man at Razzle's on Seabreeze Boulevard. Horzepa and other detectives circulated a composite sketch of the possible killer, but no one came forward and eventually the murder became a cold case -- until last month.

That's when Gordon sent Warden Burl Cain a short handwritten note telling him: "I have a cold case confession to make to you, a family to have closure," part of the note states.

The inmate told Cain that he had been moved by a church service he attended several months before at the penitentiary and he wanted to confess to killing Lazzaro. Gordon also said he wanted to apologize to Lazzaro's family.

Horzepa said penitentiary officials contacted the Volusia County Sheriff's Office on April 20.

"It was enough information for us to go there to interview him," Horzepa said. "We met with him on April 28."

And they got an earful from the man Horzepa described as "sincere and remorseful."

Gordon said he had arrived in Florida three or four months before meeting Lazzaro. He was working in Orlando and using an alias because he was wanted. He drove to Daytona Beach during Spring Break and met Lazzaro at Razzle's. The pair later went to another bar at the now-defunct Texan Motel on South Atlantic Avenue, and then headed to Gordon's motel in DeBary.

After the two had sex, Gordon said he went to the bathroom to get some cocaine. When he came out though, he said Lazzaro was rifling through a pouch where Gordon kept several fake identification cards. High on cocaine and drunk, Gordon got paranoid and thought Lazzaro would tell police about his fake ID stash.

The suspect told Lazzaro he would drive her back to her hotel in Daytona Beach, but instead, he pulled off by Dirksen and ordered her out of his car. He then followed her and said he shot her.

Stories published in The Daytona Beach News-Journal at the time said Lazzaro had been shot twice in the head, but that was not confirmed by officials on Wednesday.

Gordon gave Horzepa and Sgt. Ashley Combs details that only Lazzaro's killer would know, Horzepa said.

In addition, sheriff's officials knew Gordon had been in Central Florida in 1993 because he was arrested by the Orange County Sheriff's Office for trespassing at a school. He was armed with a .380-caliber pistol at the time, Davidson said.

Last month, when Horzepa and Combs arrived at the penitentiary, Gordon was already waiting for them in an office located in a separate building on the facility's grounds.

"He was a little bit nervous, he seemed sincere," Horzepa said.

At one point when Horzepa showed Gordon a couple of pictures of Lazzaro, he said he saw a tear roll down the convicted killer's cheek.

When Horzepa telephoned Lazzaro's mother, Kathleen Lazzaro in New York, the news was bittersweet for her.

"She was obviously very emotional," the investigator said. "For years she wanted to know what had happened to her daughter. (The news) probably filled a great void she had inside of her, always wondering how and why it happened."

Attempts to reach the family for this story were unsuccessful.

Gordon also apologized to the families of the two women he shot to death inside Lucky's Truck Stop Casino in Houma, La. The women -- one of them 63, the other 29 -- were employees of the club.

For Horzepa, solving the Lazzaro case is especially satisfying.

"We've had several cases where we've had successful conclusions," Horzepa said. "But this is the case that went the longest without being solved."

Gordon has not been charged with Lazzaro's murder. Horzepa has been talking with the State Attorney's Office to discuss prosecution of the case, Davidson said.

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